HONG KONG — Authorities in the Chinese capital have beaten and seriously injured a man for wearing a white flower in mourning for late ousted Party leader Zhao Ziyang, and they have arrested hundreds of others, Beijing residents told Radio Free Asia (RFA).
A petitioner from the central province of Henan was beaten after he wore a white mourning flower on a visit to the complaints office of the National People’s Congress last week, where hundreds of people line up daily seeking redress for grievances against the government.
“We saw him after they’d beaten him,” a bystander at the complaints office told RFA’s Mandarin service. “His eye was hanging out of its socket. But no one did anything…There were dozens of them beating a single guy,” said the man, surnamed Yang, from the northwestern region of Xinjiang.
Police and armed forces had been warned to halt any public displays of mourning around Zhao’s house, and police and security were reinforced around several of Beijing’s universities, sources said. University lecturers were deployed on shifts to prevent mourning activities among the student population.
Sources among Beijing’s petitioners told RFA that hundreds of petitioners had been arrested after visiting Zhao’s house to pay their respects since the former Communist Party general secretary died Jan. 17.
